Kripa - Kerala Model Development

Kerala Development Model - VI

How can Kerala make its GDP from $14billion to say, $150billion in 25 years? This is entirely possible. Only that we need to change our attitude, our concepts about development.

Kerala has more than 500,000 students testing SSLC. Slighlty more than half pass it. Let us say, 300,000 students pass. About 250,000 students fail and majority of them may start some apprenticeship for some low-skilled jobs. Now we have 300,000 students. Out of this, the society needs doctors, nurses, teachers, government employees etc. Remember that these are basically support services. They don't create much wealth as such. These are essential services for the well being of the society. If we say 50,000 (?) students will go for these professions a year, then we 250,000 students for higher wealth creation activities.

Can we create 50,000 jobs per year in areas like software, bio-tech, media/entertainment, and other knowledge industries combined for serving the global market place, we are talking about a big wealth creation there. If we calculate $30,000 per job, we are talking about $1.5billion additional wealth in Kerala/year. This itself is 10% of Kerala's GDP. Achieving such figures are not impossible, but very difficult. But this is the kind of challenges that facet Kerala society today.

States like AP, Karnataka, and Tamilnadu are talking about software export of a couple of billions of dollars a year as of now and in the near future. These states are also eying on new emerging areas like bio-tech. What will we see in, say 2010? We are talking about tens of billions of dollars of revenue. I hope Kerala will get at least a share of the action.

conitnued...

By Haridas

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Part VII

Part VIII

Part IX